Real vs Fake Holiday Discounts: How to Track Prices Before Black Friday and Boxing Day
Big sales events are good for buying things you already wanted at a lower price. They're also full of discounts that look bigger than they are. In 2026, Black Friday is Friday, November 27 and Cyber Monday is Monday, November 30. Boxing Day sales in the UK, Australia and elsewhere start on Saturday, December 26 (and some shops start earlier or online the night before).
You don't need to know which retailers play games with prices. You need one number they can't change: what you've actually seen the item sell for before the sale. Everything below builds on that.
Step 1: Write the list before the sales start
Start with what you need, not with what's on offer. For each item, note:
- Who it's for and how much you want it. A simple Must / Nice / Maybe label works well.
- The usual price. This is the price you've seen it selling for over the past few weeks, at more than one shop if possible. It's not the "was" price on a sale banner.
- Your target price. This is the most you'll pay during the sale. For example, if a pair of headphones usually sells for 79.99 and you decide it's only worth buying at 15% or more off, your target is 79.99 × 0.85 = 67.99.
(Amounts in this article are written without a currency symbol, so they work for dollars, pounds or any other currency.)
Doing this in late October or early November gives you a few weeks of prices to look at before the sales arrive.
Step 2: Track the usual price
Check the price of each item now and then, and note what you see with the date. A few ways to do it:
- Check by hand once or twice a week and write it down. It's slow but completely reliable.
- Price alerts: many shops let you save an item to a wish list or set an alert, and some price comparison sites send you an email when the price drops.
- Price history tools: some sites and browser extensions show a chart of an item's past prices at particular retailers. These are useful, but check which shops they cover and don't treat them as complete.
If you'd like a log that does this for you, my Black Friday & Cyber Monday Price Watch List is a spreadsheet where you record each price check and see the lowest, highest and latest price for each item against your target.
The point isn't to find the perfect lowest price ever. It's to know whether the sale price is genuinely lower than what you'd normally pay.
Step 3: Judge the discount against the usual price, not the "was" price
Here's the trap. A banner says:
"Was 129.99, now 69.99, save 46%!"
The maths on the banner is right: (129.99 − 69.99) ÷ 129.99 = 46%. But if your own notes say the headphones have been selling for 79.99 for the past month, the real saving is:
- 79.99 − 69.99 = 10.00
- 10.00 ÷ 79.99 = 12.5%
That might still be worth having, but it's a 12.5% discount, not 46%. It's also above the 67.99 target from Step 1, so on your own rules you'd wait.
A "was" price can be completely genuine, for example the price at launch, or a list price that most shops ignore. The point is that it doesn't tell you what you'd have paid last week. Your notes do.
Step 4: Check the maths on multi-buys and stacked discounts
Multi-buys. "3 for 10" on an item that's usually 3.75 each:
- 3 × 3.75 = 11.25 at the usual price
- 11.25 − 10 = 1.25 saved, which is 1.25 ÷ 11.25 = 11.1%
That's a fair discount if you'd use all three. If you only needed one, you've spent 10 instead of 3.75.
Stacked percentages. "30% off, plus an extra 20% off at checkout" is not 50% off. The second discount applies to the already-reduced price:
- Start at 100: 30% off makes it 70
- 20% off 70 makes it 56
- Total discount: 44%, not 50%
Unit prices. For food, toiletries and other consumables, compare the price per unit (per 100 g, per litre, per wash) rather than the pack price. A 500 g pack at 3.20 is 0.64 per 100 g. A 750 g pack at 4.50 is 0.60 per 100 g, so the bigger pack is cheaper per gram, if you'll use it before it goes off.
Step 5: Watch out for pressure, not just prices
Some signs that a sale wants you to decide fast rather than well:
- Countdown timers and "only 2 left" messages. These can be accurate, but either way they're not a reason to buy something that isn't on your list.
- "Deal of the day" items you'd never searched for.
- Free delivery thresholds that push you to add something you didn't plan to buy. Work out whether the delivery charge is less than the extra item.
- Different models. Sometimes the sale version of a product has a slightly different model number or spec from the one you compared. Check the details match before you compare prices.
If you're not sure, put it in the basket, leave it, and come back in an hour. A real deal on something you need will usually still look good an hour later.
Step 6: Keep a running total
A string of small "savings" can still add up to overspending. Keep a running total of what you've spent against a budget, and keep the Must items covered first. If you're planning gifts, my guide to setting a Christmas gift budget covers how to set the total. My Christmas planning timeline shows where the sales fit in the run-up to Christmas.
After the sales, add up two numbers: how much you spent, and how much you saved compared with the usual prices you recorded. The second number is your honest saving. Anything compared with inflated "was" prices doesn't count.
A spreadsheet that does the comparison for you
You can do all of this in a notebook or a basic spreadsheet. If you'd like it set up already, my Holiday Sales Shopping Budget & Deal Tracker is a spreadsheet for Google Sheets, Excel or LibreOffice with a wish list for up to 150 items. You enter who each item is for, its priority, its usual price, your target price and the best price you find. Prices at or below your target turn green, and prices over it turn red. It works out the saving against the usual price for each purchase, and a summary shows budget, spent, left and what's needed for the remaining Must items. "Black Friday" is used as a general term, and the tracker isn't affiliated with any retailer.
Disclosure: the deal tracker and the price watch list are my own products on Payhip, priced at $1 each. The examples above are made up to show the maths, and aren't real prices from any shop. This is general guidance, not financial advice.